The Trump Administration exempts new nuclear reactors from environmental review

The Trump Administration has created an exclusion for new experimental reactors being built at sites around the U.S. from a major environmental law.

The law would have required them to disclose how their construction and operation might harm the environment, and it also typically required a written, public assessment of the possible consequences of a nuclear accident.

The exclusion announcement comes just days after NPR revealed officials at the Department of Energy had secretly rewritten environmental, safety and security rules to make it easier for the reactors to be built.